Flower lovers left disappointed by Floriade this year are flocking to another famous tulip garden half an hour away.
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While poor weather has hampered the annual flower festival in Commonwealth Park, Tulip Top Gardens at Sutton has seen record numbers of punters drift between its beds of blooms, owners Bill and Pat Rhodin said.
They open their 10 acres of bulbs, annuals and flowering trees to the public at the same time as Floriade every year but this time around they've seen a marked increase in people coming to their garden.
"It's certainly been packed out. On Sunday it was unbelievable," Mr Rhodin said.
"We can usually gauge it by our food marquee because of the amount of food we have to order in, we do our own catering as well and so the orders just keep getting higher, higher and higher.
"A lot of people this year are getting a season pass. It was never like that before but particularly this year people are coming back every week."
The champion gardeners bought their 40-acre property off the Federal Highway in 1993 and started landscaping in 1994.
"The children used to say 'dad why don't you do something that's going to earn you a dollar?' and this is where we've ended up," Mr Rhodin said.
By 1997 the first trees had gone in and in 1998 the first spring bulbs bloomed.
Mr Rhodin could not say how many flowers he's planted in all - "He's lost count I think," Mrs Rhodin said - but in each of the large beds, he estimated there were more than 5000 bulbs.
'There's probably half a million tulips alone," he said.
Come spring, each of the beds erupts into a sea of vivid colour.
Soft music floats through avenues of flowering sakura trees and a chorus of frogs sing near a small waterfall.
"People think they're part of the music but we've got real frogs, they're the real thing," Mr Rhodin said.
While an adult ticket will set you back $16, visitors are treated to a free sausage sizzle and cuppa.
People are encouraged take along a picnic basket or a bottle of wine and curl up under a curtain of blossoms.
Dogs on their leads are welcome and there is plenty of parking too.
"On a still day you see people sitting in the chairs, falling asleep and it creates this atmosphere, I don't know what it does to people but it sends them into another world," he said.
Mr Rhodin said people regularly compared his garden to Floriade but he recommended flower lovers see both.
"I suppose people expect a lot from Floriade because it's government funded. Here it's just a family with limited resources but I suppose people do compare it a lot. It's a different atmosphere here," he said.